‘Mike, I know how these fucking spics work. This is the wrong move.’

Bryant looked down at him. He seemed more disappointed with the other man than anything else. ‘This isn’t Guatemala, Nick. Chris is the resident NAME expert, you like it or not. Now you talk to him and get this stuff into a usable form by Monday. I meant what I said. I am tired of dicking about with that old fuck. We go uplincon with Echevarria and his cabinet next week, and I want the axe over his head by then. You coming for a coffee, Chris?’

‘Uh. Sure.’ Chris got to his feet. ‘Nick. You’ll call me, right?’

Makin made a noise in his throat.

At the door, Bryant turned and looked back across the office.

‘Hey, Nick. No hard feelings, huh? It’s just, we’ve let this slide too far. It’s getting out of hand. Time to bring in the riot squad, you know. I don’t want Notley looking in on us like we’re a bunch of kids just set fire to the kitchen. That’s not good for anyone.’

They left Makin with it.

‘You threatening him?’ asked Chris, in the lift.

Bryant grinned. ‘Bit.’

The doors opened at ground level and they walked out into the arching, light filled space of the tower’s lobby area. Fountain splash and an ambient subsonic vibe filled the air. Chris felt his mouth flex into a grin of his own.

‘You pissed off with him, then?’

‘Nick? Nah. Just he’s too fucking impressed with himself, is all. Ever since that Guatemala thing. He just needs to know where the orders are coming from, then he jumps. Jesus, look at that.’

Hanging in the air above one of the fountains, a huge Shorn Associates holo ran back-and-forth flicker-cut footage of the Cambodian conflict. Cross-hair graphics sprang up and tracked selected hardware as it appeared on screen - helicopters, assault rifles, medical gear, camera zeroing in, logistical data scrolling down alongside each sniper-caught item. Make, specs, cost. Shorn contribution and involvement.

‘This the BBC footage?’ asked Bryant. He’d handed publicity to Chris a couple of weeks ago.

‘At base, yeah. We bought it right out of the can in Phnom Penh, in case there was something inappropriate in there. You never can tell with that guy Syal, he’s a real fucking crusader. Won a Pilger Award last year. Anyway, the woman at Imagicians said they’d generate some of the closer detail themselves, like for the medical hardware. They can shoot some real state-of-the-art life-support stuff in the studio, then mix and match on the palette, so it looks like it was really there.’ Chris nodded up at the holo. ‘Looks good, huh?’

‘Yeah, not too shabby. So did Syal cut up rough when they took his footage off him?’

Chris shrugged. ‘Don’t think he got any say. We made sure there was a programme producer out there for the handover. Standard sponsorship terms. And what we handed them back had enough battle sequences to come across as gritty realism. You know, corpses on fire, that sort of stuff.’

‘No women or children, right.’

‘No. Ran it myself on the uplink. It’s clean.’

In the holo, a Cambodian guerrilla commander appeared, face weary. He rattled away in Khmer. Subtitling sprang up in red letters. It is a hard fight but with the help of our corporate partners, our victory is as certain as

‘He really saying that?’ asked Bryant curiously.

‘Think so.’ Chris was tracking a well-endowed blonde woman across the floorspace. ‘Think they give them cue cards or something. You know, sometimes I think I could just come down here and stand under the subsonics for half an hour, save myself buying the coffee.’

Bryant spotted where Chris was looking. ‘That’s not subsonics.’

‘Ah, come on Mike.’

‘Yeah, that reminds me. Want to go to a party tomorrow night?’

‘Party in the zones?’ Chris and Mike had been back across the cordons a few times since the Falkland incident, though never back to that particular pub and never quite as wrecked as they had been that night. At first, Chris was nervous on these visits, but Mike Bryant’s easy familiarity with the cordoned zones and their nightlife slowly won him over. He came to see that there was a trick to handling things there, and that Bryant knew it. You didn’t flaunt your elite status, but nor did you try to play it down. You acted like who you were, you didn’t try to be liked, and in most cases you were accorded a wary respect. In time the respect might develop into something else, but you didn’t expect that. And you didn’t need it to have a good time.

‘Why should it be in the zones?’ asked Bryant innocently.

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ They stepped through the armoured-glass doors and into the street. The sun fell warm on their faces. ‘Because the last three were?’

‘Bullshit. What about Julie Pinion’s bash.’

‘Okay, the last two, then. And Julie’s wasn’t far off, come to that.’

‘I’m sure she’d be thrilled to hear that, price she paid for that duplex. That’s an up-and-coming regenerated area, Chris.’

‘So it is. I’d forgotten.’

They pushed into Louie Louie’s and nodded at familiar faces in the queue. Chris’s fame had eroded sufficiently that all he got from his Shorn colleagues these days were grunts and the odd grin.

‘So tell me about this party.’

Mike leaned back on the tiled wall. ‘Remember Troy?’

‘From the Falkland. Sure.’ They’d run into the Jamaican a couple more times in clubs on the other side of the wire, but in Chris’s mind he was irrevocably linked with the events of that night.

‘Well. Turns out his eldest son just got a scholarship to the Thatcher Institute. Fast-track international finance and economics programme, guaranteed placement with a major consulting firm at the end of it. So he’s throwing a party at his place. You are cordially invited.’

‘So it is in the fucking zones.’

‘What? Nah, Troy doesn’t live in the zones. He moved out years ago, got a place on the edge of Dulwich.’

‘Which edge?’

‘Look, it’s a better area than Julie Pinion picked, alright. You don’t want to come, I’ll tell him you’re working late. On a Friday.’

‘He invited me?’

‘Yeah, like I said. Cordially. Bring Faulkner, he said.’

‘Nice of him.’

‘Yeah, you got to come. Troy’s parties are fucking cool. Lots of powders and potions, big sound systems. Really good mix of people too. Suits, media, DJs, dealers.’ Bryant’s face fell abruptly. ‘Shit, you know what. I bet fucking Liz’ll be there.’

Chapter Seventeen

‘Look, I really don’t think it’s going to be your kind of thing.’

‘Why not?’ Carla folded her arms and leaned back against the door of the freezer. ‘Too high-class for me? Am I going to show you up?’

‘That isn’t fair. I’ve asked you to come to every Shorn function we’ve had this year.’

‘Yes. Very dutiful of you.’

‘And that’s really not fucking fair. I wanted you there, every time. Including all the times you said no, I wanted you to be there with me.’ Chris lowered his voice. ‘I was proud of you. I wanted to show people that.’

‘You mean you wanted to show off.’

‘Ah,’ Chris made a helpless gesture. ‘Fuck you, Carla. I put myself on the line for you every single—‘

‘If you’re going to talk to me like that ...’ She was already moving, across the kitchen and away from him. ‘I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’

‘Fine. Fuck off, then.’

He stood, fists knotted, surrounded by the twinned debris of another evening’s separate dining, while she walked out on him. Again. Her voice drifted back down the stairs.

‘I’ve got better things to do tomorrow night, anyway.’

‘Fine, then fuck off.’ He bawled the last two words after her, dismayed at the sudden detonation of fury in his guts.

She didn’t answer.

For a while, he crashed plates and cutlery about, loading the dishwasher with a lack of care or interest that he knew could sometimes drag her back into the kitchen to take over. He was kidding himself, and he knew it. This was a new level of hostility they’d reached.